Raising the roof in MN

We have been on the run since our trip to NYC.  Milt has been re-editing Video Letters From Prison based on the great info we got from Fernanda.  In the meantime, the plot for our strawbale has been leveled and a load of clay arrived on the property today.  Now that he got the rough cut done, we will be seriously looking at “rasising the roof” and laying the foundation for our new house.  I feel a little bit like I am in a dream.  I’ve had a pattern in my life of not really believing good things can happen to me.  It is strange, because great things DO happen to me.  My life is blessed beyond what I could ever have asked for, and yet I look at that leveled plot of land and have trouble “seeing” the house there.  I’m working on it–both my belief systems and my vision.

I remember when my dad built our first house.  I was in junior high and the housebuilding took two years and all of our help.  My sister Becky and I used to sit on the floor (no walls or roof) of our “bedroom” and dream about when we would be actually sleeping there.  In the winter we used to jump off the “floor” into the snowdrifts below.   I can remember digging ditches, nailing siding, and doing whatever else was required.  I also remember that we had to move in before it was done and our living space was the downstairs “rumpus” room.  I think that is was an early name for “family room.”  There were 7 children and my mom and dad but we did take over the bedrooms so it wasn’t totally a camp out.

June 18th was the anniversary of my Dad’s death.  It was also the day my parent’s married and my sister’s birthday.  She was born one year after they married.  I think, since I am thinking about Dad and building houses, I will post a little thing I wrote about him several years ago.

Later,

Jamie

My Father’s Hands

Last night I dreamed my father gave me a beaded bag with trails of heart-shaped beads wandering across the pale cloth.  Something in my soul wants to finger the trail of beads to discover what he meant by this gift.  Does he mean follow this trail, my darling girl, the trail that is both made of the heart and leads to the heart?

So many books about mothers and daughters, fathers and sons-but what of the daughter caught by a golden thread to her father’s soul?  What of that child?

I am a grown woman, a grandmother now, who looks down at her own stubby fingers one day and sees her father’s hands.  They are not the hands of a piano player or a dancer but the sturdy hands of labor, of getting things done, of endurance and strength.  Iremembers his hands in one scene and then another: tying myskates in winter, sketching the walls of his new house, or solving an intricate problem on paper as if each blunt fingertip had its very own brain, and only when his hands moved could he think.

I remember the warmth and strength of his hands as he kneaded the calves of mylegs late in the night when growing pains hurt badly enough to wake me up crying.  I see his hands holding cards in a favorite game of whist or bridge or gently patting the shoulder of a friend he meets on the street.  I see his two hands resting on a steering wheel while driving to Grandma’s house or holding the very edges of the Sunday paper after church, a plate of powdered-sugar donuts hidden on the other side of the news.  I remember the way my father’s hands would pick up my needlepoint project and run the yarn through six rows tugging just a little too tightly so that I could always see in the tapestry of the finished work, his rows beside my own.

It is his hands I see holding a Louis L’Amour book late in the evening letting go only to take a sip of the beer warming on the side table; his hands building two of our houses to shelter those he loved most; his hands fashioning the ugliest boat ever out  of wood and plank; his hands turning wood, twisting metal, picking berries–and then building a special screen to roll the berries down to clean them.

I see his hands playfully slapping my mother’s backside or holding her against the fridge to steal a kiss, and his hands wielding the razor that plowed a smooth path across his lathered chin while I, sitting on the closed lid of the toilet, waitied for the moment when he would turn and growl and try to kiss my cheek like a rabid dog until Iscreamed and ran out of the bathroom giggling.

All of this I see in an instant when I look down and see my own square hands, so sturdy and strong.

And then I see his hands, swollen and bruised, a blueberry stain on the back where the IV had kept him alive for three more minutes, five more minutes, and then that last and final breath, of death.  And then he was gone, living on in the short fingers of my own hands that crack in the winter just like his did.

My father’s hands.

(Note:  My father married on June 18, had the first of eight children on June 18, and died on June 18.  It was Father’s Day on the day he passed on.)

From NYC back to MN

We just got back from a few days in New York.  We always like going there for a bit.  We had a fabulous doctoring session for Milt’s film, Video Letters from Prison.  Fernanda Rossi spent an entire day with us going scene by scene through the film.  I learned a lot and gained some great strategies that I can even use with my writing.  What fascinated me was that she began by getting to know us and how we think/live/create.  Then she laid out the differences (in films and other areas) between a film whose core is rooted in values, a film whose core is based on fascination (entertainment) and one whose core is based on “moral obligation.”  What Milt and I realized was that one of the reasons we are not very commercial is because most of our work is value-driven.  We tend to stay away from projects meant only to entertain or to preach.  It was kind of an eye-opener.  Even the Bead People are simply here to lead the way to a more peaceful way of being.  We are not pounding the pavement for “peace.”

After the core analysis, then Fernanda went scene by scene with us through the film and helped us to see what the main objective of each scene was.  When we identified that, it was much easier to see what belonged and what needed to be cut.

I loved the process of working with her and ten hours later we were both excited and wasted.  We stumbled back to our hotel and relaxed.

We did have one day to play, though, and also some some good friends.  Tomorrow–it is back to the homestead.

Short post tonight.  I am tired.

Jamie

Reflection on an old newsletter

I just reread that earlier post.  Lately as I unwind from our move from Rapid City to the northwoods of MN, I have been really trying to empty myself out to see (or hear) what spirit wants from me.  It is like a maze–I follow any path and end up in the same place.  I want to write stories and share them.  Tonight we went to a special event in Minneapolis celebrating the people who got Bush Foundation Fellowships.  I applied for that for the second time but did not make it into the finals.  It’s funny–I was not jealous.  I honestly felt like celebrating their success.  At the same time, I felt a bit sad that I can’t find a place for my shining little stories that attempt to bring light to the world.  It feels like my only link to a reading public is through this blog.  I am happy you are finding me and I plan to begin sharing some of those light stories with you even if I have to do it chapter by chapter.

Thanks for being here.

Jamie

Say Yes to Spirit

First published in March of 08 in my newsletter after the birth of my fifth granchild, Adrien Walla.

Years ago when Milt and I were first starting to produce Oyate (native music series), our first encounter was with a Siletz woman named Aggie.  We’d traveled to Oregon to interview her husband, Grant Pilgrim.  We were nervous and unsure of how we’d be received (strangers in a strange land) and Aggie met us at the door and said, “Oh, the creator is so good to us-he has sent us just what we asked for.”  Later, we discovered Grant was dying of cancer and his family’s greatest wish was to hear him sing once again-and to record that music for later generations.

Aggie’s words, “The Creator is so good to us” have become like a mantra to me and the beginning of 2008 seems even more abundant than usual.

Before Christmas this past year I was feeling grumpy from my overloaded schedule and was whining around (forgetting my mantra).  One night I got tired of hearing my own complaints so I sat down and wrote three pages nonstop listing every single thing I’m grateful for.  When I finished, my self-pity had evaporated like mist and rain.  It has yet to return.

Today I think I had another lesson in this curriculum of life.  I was driving back from Pine Ridge after a long week of classes and plugged in an old cassette tape (we’ve been doing a lot of sorting and clearing).  On the tape a man was talking about shamanism and how we must say “yes” when spirit calls.  He kept saying it over and over again.  When spirit calls, say yes.  When spirit calls, say yes. He jokingly said we put spirit off as if it had gotten a message on an answering machine saying, “Hi, you have reached the body of Albuerto.  He isn’t in right now but will get back to you as soon as he can.”  This made me laugh aloud in the car, and I thought of how often I put off what spirit has asked me to do.

What spirit asks may not always match what we thing we should, could, or want most to be doing.  As our world unfolds, I feel an urgency that more and more of us need to say “yes” and quit buzzing around empty beehives thinking that is where the honey is.

I was struck by my own ability to put spirit off.  I realized that I project my beautiful worlds into fiction and then long to enter those worlds-where rivers, stones, trees, and animals all communicate, where mighty winds blow knowledge into the minds of the forgetful humans.  I say yes to writing the stories spirit tells me to write-but then I don’t share them.  I keep them as if they “belong” to me.

So, in the midst of my familial abundance, I make a new resolution for this new (but aging) year.  I will say yes to spirit by sharing anything I can with others.

Rocks Don’t Breathe

I decided that you have heard enough of my planting and play.  I scoured my files and found a bit of “flash” fiction to post tonight.  It was my first attempt at this mini genre and it actually got an honorable mention in the Florida State Short Short Fiction contest.  I won’t say anymore about it and will just post it.

Rocks Don’t Breathe

When he found me I was living under a rock contemplating the wide nothing that had become my life.  I was used to fungus and soft moss and no mirrors and was beginning to think this was not a bad life.  After all.  At least I was no longer clawing tree trunks and scaling naked sky and flying into nothingness.  I am a rock.  I live under a rock.  Rocks are all I eat.  I shit rocks.  When I grow up, I will be a bigger rock.  That’s life.

But when he scraped the mossy sweater off my back and found pink skin and breasts and said that’s not fungus, that’s the life of a woman between your legs, I was so scared I burrowed and hid, but he said no and pulled me into sunshine and laid me nude atop a boulder to dry and said you are so beautiful.  I said yes but you cannot imagine how much I like rocks and he said bullshit.  Rocks don’t bleed or breathe or beat.  Rocks don’t.

And then I was between the rock and him, a hard place to be.

But I pushed when he said push and breathed when he said breathe and air entered my stony lungs in deep gulping pulls and I came out of myself fast, rushing, realizing, split seconds only, that I could have it all.  After all.

Finding the Balance Between Living and Working

Today was an odd day.  The sun was shining and there was a cool breeze–a perfect day for gardening.  I planted dill, replanted my tomatoes, added some cukes (replacing the frozen ones) and then began to feel guilty for not working on the text book project or Video Letters.  I snitted around a bit and then asked Milt to add a small table to our trailer so that I could spread out the three working manuscripts I need for the text book project.  Within 30 minutes I was spread out in a corner of our trailer.  The table will have to come down in time for the bed to come out–but it was so pleasant I got a lot done.

It is challenging living with less and making the best of small things.  I like it.  It makes me feel light on the earth, which was one of my goals.  I look at that comma before which and wonder is that right?  The text book I am editing is a grammar book, and I dream about dependent and independent clauses at the moment.  I am hoping to have this part of the project wrapped up within a week and off to the printers.

“Going Green” has become a marketing tactic.  I find that very interesting and a bit paradoxical because what we really need is to use less and find other ways to fullfill our desires.  I think the spirit longs for great things and when we do not feed it great things, it settles for the small things.

One other thing I did today was work with a tiny space beneath a spruce tree.  I’d found this metal bushal bin in the woods behind our trailer yesterday, and I have decided to turn it into my “Lisa” garden. I erected the “drift kabob” my sister gave me last summer (a metal rod with artistically drilled and stacked pieces of driftwood on it)/  Beside the bucket and the driftwood is a small windchime our niece gave us long ago.  It is one of the few pretties that came with us to MN.  What is a Lisa garden?  When my daughter got married one of the guest gifts was a small packet of flower seed with their name and wedding date printed on the package.  I ‘ve carried that around with me since they got married and now I plan to plant a mini Lisa garden.  I think I will plant a small garden for each of my children, and whenever I tend it I’ll imagine all the good things that are growing or will grow in their lives as they mature.

I think the berry patch belongs to my mom.  Last summer when I was maniacally picking blueberries, I was in the patch that my mom and I used to pick before she died.  Even now, over a decade later, I would lift my head and imagine I could hear her calling my name.  We used to call out to each other as we wandered the woods to keep from getting lost or too far apart.  W also planted two Concord grape vines in there this afternoon.

I love that garden.  It is across the meadow from my trailer and my newly developing gardens because we needed immediate access to water last summer.

It is clear that I am beginning to unwind from a hectic winter and spring.  I’m not sure where my thoughts will take me. I just now overheard a couple screaming at each other, throwing the ‘f’ word around and calling each other effing stupid.  I think about how gently I pulled those grape vines from their bucket this afternoond, taking care to expose as little as possible, adding water immediately, covering them quickly.  People need to care for each other just as gently. We should watch our mouths.  We need to be awake and aware and active.  Now.  In 20 years of marriage I have never used that word with Milt.  Why would I want to hurt someone that I love?

For those of you who are tuning in, friends and strangers alike, take good care of those you love–the yield will be beyond measure.

Jamie

Ode to Acorn Squash

Today I wandered around and kicked up hills in the sand and dirt and planted acorn squash and pumpkin.  I thought it would be fun to see all these plants just roaming whereever they want to go.  In my small garden in Rapid City I had to contain and train and cajole them to stay put.  One year I had a pumpkin plant that took over nearly the whole garden.

I am experimenting with different things.  In one spot I tried a “trench garden” where you dig a three foot deep trench, fill it with trash paper and cardboard, and the fill it in and plant on top of it.  In another spot I tried bag gardening–bags of topsoil with the tops cut off and the seed sewn right into the bag.  It is supposed to be a good way to start a first year garden.  I only put greens and cilantro in those.  Maybe I’ll call my pumpkin and squash garden “Free range squash.”  I still have two grapevines to put in and then I need to replace my tomatoes and cukes.  I also created a “Tool Tipi” today.  That was fun–two trashy looking closet doors destined for the dump came together to provide a shelter for my rakes and shovels.  It actually looks kind of cool.  I stapled a rice bag over the top to give it a little more water protection.

The sun shone.  The ticks roamed.  The mosquitos smiled.  And it was a wonderful few hours under the newly blue sky. There is just something about working with dirt and sand and my own trash pile that makes me happy.   And then I ended the day with my second belly dancing class.  My sister and two pretty nieces are all taking belly dancing lessons.  They are one session ahead of me but I can shimmy with the best of them.  I am not sure if my right hip aggrees, but that is what happens when a 55 year old woman shimmys.

Next week we fly to New York City to work with a “film doctor”.  Fernanda is going to spend a day asking us questions about Video Letters From Prison and helping us to hear our own answers.  No mystery as to why we chose her to work with!  Gaydell–thanks for signing on.  I miss you!  When I figure this straw bale thing out I still may come and plant one on your land.  Tell those other bear lodge eaters to sign on, too.

I’ll keep you posted,

Jamie

New Goals

Tonight I am realizing that it is time to decide what to do with the time I have just freed up.  It has been raining, cold, and gray and my old Minnesota depression threatens to return.  I need some new goals.  A long time ago when I found myself in a similar situation, I decided to ride it out for awhile and see what the greater forces wanted me to do.  I entered a quiet period of aloneness and meditation and that is a little how I feel right now.  I’m nearly done with the text book I’ve been editing and Milt has become fully immersed in producing his film, Video Letters from Prison.

Now what?  I can’t be sure if family constellation and teaching are still up for me.  Time will tell, I guess.  I do know that we will be breaking ground on our strawbale house sometime in the next week–rain or shine.  My first goal will be to learn how to put pictures on my blog!  How is that for a short term goal?  And how about if I make a goal to add something to my blog every day.

What is your goal?  What direction are you heading in?

Jamie

Homesteading MN–The Adventure Begins

After a week of getting settled, I’m finally feeling here.  On May 22 I went off contract with Oglala Lakota College, and then I went to Lincoln, NE to watch my grandkids for a week.  Now, I am back in our little tiny trailer in the north woods of Cass Lake, Minnesota.  It is pretty wild.  Not the land but the fact that we would sell most of our stuff, clear it all out, quit a good, steady job, and leave to live in a 8 x 16 foot trailer.  I’ve had moments of thinking we must be nuts, and other moments of taking a deep breath and falling into my body.  All 24 of my blueberry plants survived the winter.  I sat one day and plucked or cut all the pretty blooms off so that the plants could have another year to get established.  I wonder what I need to do to get established?

Since we already had a substantial bit of land tilled up and fenced for the berries, we decided this year to just put a few vegetables in there and concentrate on building our house.  Unfortunately, it has been so cold that the cukes and tomatoes we bought froze last night-on June 5th.  Unbelievable!  I obviously don’t need to worry that I am getting my garden in too late.

A lot has been accomplished in just over a week.  The power folks came in and put our electricity in and the next day my brother’s showed up and helped us pound a well.  Milt and I “witched” the spot we wanted for the well.  My brothers gave us each a pair of slim rods bent just enough to hold in the palm of your hands.  We walked all over the area near where we want to build.  It is amazing how those slim rods seem to have their own energy and slide through our hands and cross over the “water spots.”  We chose the place where it was strongest for both of us and we got water within 12 feet.  We pounded down to 20 feet and then added a pump.  When we tested, we were getting ten gallons per minute.

As much as I love puttering and planting and playing with this bit of land, I also want to settle into myself to see what is next for me.  I have left behind the regular family constellation work I was doing, my full time teaching job, plus all of my other creative pursuits.  What now?  I am hoping that an irresistible urge to write comes over me at some point but I’ve decided not to even push that.  I am not going for a subsistence kind of lifestyle-just a simpler and healthier one.  I love that crystal clear water flowing from my well, and the berries blooming on my bushes.  (Although I did do a terrible bloomicide.)

So, stay posted and I will see what comes up.  Milt and I have two big projects that we are finishing and then hopefully the warm weather will come and we will begin building our strawbale house.  We staked it out the other day and got it approved.  Exciting.

Onward,

Jamie

Excerpt From “A Good Soft Blanket”

(This is Chapter 4 of an unpublished novel.)

The first week after Alan’s departure wasn’t too bad.  I had a lot I wanted to do.  It was still early June and things were growing in that wild, uncontrollable June way, and every day I spent pruning, trimming, raking and baking my face beneath the brilliant, yellow sun.  Alan called me once, said should we try again, give it another shot?  I said no, not much point to that.  He gave me his new cell phone number; he was staying with his brother and said call if I had a change of heart. 

That was the trouble.  My heart.  Unchangeable as a stone, gathering no moss, unmovable.  In some ways it was a change of heart, I suppose, but there was no blood flowing his way, no pump or beat or pulse, so I said no, no point in that.

It was the second week, the week of my personal inventory which kicked off the real movement.  I was reading a self-help book.  It suggested that  if you want to know who you are, really ARE, walk around your house and look at what is there.  Let IT tell you.  The book said to open drawers and closets, peer at pictures on walls, study labels on medicine bottles, look into the silverware drawer.  I felt like a Realtor seeing a potential property for the first time, clipboard in hand.  The results of this inventory shocked me. 

Except for the secluded hidden beaches in the coves and corners, I did not exist in my own house.  I double-checked, inching from room to room, growing anxious, even nauseated, wondering if I sublimated myself so well in the twelve-year sleep of my marriage.  The house had no personality, no flair.  Nothing.

Where was I? 

I felt like Van Winkle, blinking and yawning, eyelids fluttering, asking what world is this?   Finally, I pulled the chain that let down a hidden ladder, and I went into the attic.  Somewhere up there was a box of my mementos, and it suddenly seemed oh-so-important to find it.  When I did find it, it was such a tiny box that tears cornered in my eyes.   I flipped up the lid and saw old notebooks, a packet of letters written to my folks from England during a six-month college trip, and an odd assortment of stuff.  Some was just plain silly: a dried flower from a boy whose name I could not recall, a pop-top from my first beer, pictures of classmates with friends forever scratched on their backsides.  I couldn’t call a single one friend, now, as an adult.  I flipped open the ninth grade poetry project and saw:

Life will hand Mary

No harder task,

Then to know the right answer

And have nobody ask.

The space for the author said “Anonymous” and I realized that, even as a girl, I’d felt invisible.  I started to jam the folder back into the box and a small page fluttered out and landed between my legs.  I read my earliest attempt at haiku;

Please, I want to know

Did Jesus ever wonder,

If there was a God?

Oh desperate, desperate words, the plea of a ninth grade girl for meaning, for magic.  Please.  So polite, so mournful.  I wanted to weep for that girl still peeking around the corners of my soul.   

The morning was disappearing and the roof of the house had become a cookie sheet, the attic an oven.  Sweating profusely, I left the box and it’s sad, sorry contents.  I climbed down the rickety steps, folding them back into themselves and making them disappear like magic.

That’s what I had done.  Simply folded myself into my self like a magician and disappeared for twelve long years. 

I started lunch.  Flat egg noodles with melted butter, fresh cloves of garlic, a single tomato sliced into the mixture.  Tom and Emily came in to eat. 

Tom stared at me as I put their plates on the table.  “Mom?”

“Yes?” 

He was still staring at me.  “What is it, Tee?”

“Nothing.  Just . . . you look funny.”

Funny–that suspicious word.  Funny as in funny like a clown, funny like Jay Leno, funny like frizzy hair?  Funny how? 

I went to the small curio shelf and peered through the gee-gaws into the mirror behind.  What I saw startled me.  My face was blotchy red, my eyes looked wild, my mouth open.  The creatures on the tiny shelf looked embedded into my skin like gravel after a bike accident.  I giggled.  For the first time, I thought I detected just the smallest hint of color rising from my open mouth.  I think it was yellow, maybe gold.  It was brief, hardly perceptible.  “You’re right, Tom.  I look hilarious.  Let’s eat.”

I scuttled the self-help book and flopped it into the trash, dumped dead noodles on its cheery cover, and then sprinkled wet coffee ground over the top before I hauled it out.  Somehow I made it through that day and finally, when Tom and Emily were bathed and bedded, I ground fresh coffee beans, sniffing greedily at the dark scent. 

While water dribbled through the machine, I cracked cubes from a cheap, blue plastic ice tray and filled a glass with clear, distilled water.  I thought seriously (couldn’t get that book off my mind) about the many pitiful pseudo-rituals I’d created in lieu of anything truly meaningful.  My spirit was thirsty–metaphorically present– in these endless drinking rituals of mine.  Had I ever really embraced any religious practice, I may have been lighting small, scented candles, waving burning sticks of incense, dabbing ritual water in the form of a cross on my own body.  Instead I was preparing coffee with a dollop of half and half and a tall, clear glass of iced water and opening a notebook to a clear, unmarred page. 

My god, I needed guidance, I thought.  Should I raise the blank pages like burning sage to the four directions, to above and below, I wondered?   Invoke the gods I didn’t believe in-and who didn’t believe in me? 

Instead I picked up the plain, blue Papermate (the best writing pen I owned) and using plain, block letters, I opened salutations with, I want . . . . 

I wrote it again. 

I want . . . .

I tried again using all caps: WHAT I REALLY WANT MOST IS . . . .

I invoked Natalie’s Zen practice and repeated silently to myself–say anything, write anything, hurry, move, quicksand here, go, go on, directly to go, do not stop at go . . . .

I want sand between my toes,  want to dance top-naked under a full moon,  want a soul mate, damn it!  I want (’S’ words only) sand, sex, spirit, strawberries, storms . . . .

Try again.  I decided to be Owen Meany and use all capitals).  SAND SEX SPIRIT STRAWBERRIES SEA SOUL MATE STORMS SIZZLE SERENITY SKY SENSATION SILLINESS SERENDIPITY SOIL SIZZLE

An old teaching came to mind. Be specific. 

I can’t. 

Then flip the coin, heads or tails.

What I don’t want is . . . . I couldn’t write it.  I couldn’t write a single word.

The deconstruction of my life began at that moment.  It was a Zen moment, a satori of instant recognition, and another ‘S’ word.  I wrote the single word on the page before me.  STUFF.

I don’t want…stuff.

I serve stuff.

The crux.  The confession.  The crucible.

I was getting caught in ‘C’ words now.  I stared at the page and realized I serve the stuff in my life that means nothing and IS NOT ME.  I polish furniture I despise, mow grass I hate . . . pull weeds, scrub floors, wash dishes, make beds.  I had sublimated myself to an unmade bed. 

If I was to discover the new direction of my life, I must first erase the old.  I decided, then and there, we would make a drastic change.  I would be like Descartes’, remove all beliefs and rabble until only the truth emerged. 

I think, therefore I am.

By morning the way was clear.  I never imagined it could be that easy.  I gave myself one day per year.  Twelve years to accumulate what I didn’t want–twelve days to get rid of it again.  Alan had taken what he wanted.  The rest was up to me.  Not a moment longer would I spend serving this stuff.  I had wasted enough time.

I mobilized the kids and told them, “You can keep three things.  The rest goes.  Except clothes, of course–but get rid of what doesn’t fit, isn’t liked, or is shredded.”  At first they looked at me like mom had lost her mind.  And perhaps I had, somewhere between a midnight dance with moon beings, and a hot trip to the attic.  Nothing was clear to me except this.  I had to unload a life in order to make a life.  I had to go to the desert if I was to find the forest. 

I was not quite rational (even about my spiritual metaphors), but once Thomas and Emily realized I was deadly serious about this, they joined the adventure. 

We attacked with a vengeance, moving through the house like looters in a riot.  We filled cartons with books, dishes, clothing, household wares, candles, cheesy wall junk like tin butterflies and heavy metal sconces.  No, we were not packing for a move–we were dejunking.  Over the days that followed, venders and traders lined up at my door and marched over the place like an army.  I sold the chairs, couches, bookcases, and books.  I sold the beds, bedding, and the bureau that once belonged to somebody’s grandmother.  Not mine.  The venders came and went while I stood on the top step and waved each load off to its final destination–to someone else’s life, not mine.   With each load moving out the front door, I felt lighter and lighter. 

We even cleared the entire woodshop of old windows, bagged up doorknobs, dead picture frames, buckets of nails, and yellow rolls of insulation reminiscent of my soft yellow blanket (which I kept).  That woodshop load went to a handsome man named Charles who was building a recycled house outside of Belle Fourche.  He caught my eye for a moment; I think it was the lean, blue-jean look, but I refused to see him, refused to be distracted even for a moment. 

Had I looked, had I seen him, all that unfolded over the next three months may have taken an entirely different turn, but in that moment I was grateful somebody would haul off those bulky used windows and a mountain of bolts, nails, screws, and tools. 

 For twelve days I was the mistress of recycle, reuse and, most importantly, refuse.  We stuffed the fists full of money into a Guatemalan book bag.  By the end of the twelfth day the kids and I, now in sleeping bags on the living room floor (or on the trampoline where we had taken to sleeping on nice nights), laid the money in piles of ones, tens, twenties, fifties, and hundreds.  Tom gleefully counted the piles while Emily made tidy notes in a small pocket notebook.

When the piles of money had been tabulated, Tom took his pocket calculator (oddly, one of the three items he’d kept–his father’s child) and tallied up the figures.  I sat cross-legged on the floor, arms folded across my chest, feeling like a true urban Indian.  “Well, how much?”

“Hang on, Mom, just a minute.”  His head was bent, and I had the urge to lick his forehead, grooming him like a mother animal.  I’d reduced my needs to their most basic, instinctual elements.

Emily scooted next to me.  The kids must have sensed a great adventure unfolding in all this.  They’d thrown them selves completely, trustingly at my mercy.  And I was merciful.  At least I hoped that would prove true.  We’d not even kept the television.  In fact, I made sure it went out the door first.

“Okay.  I got it.  Here it is.”  Thomas raised his head and grinned widely.  ”$4,828.36.  Holy cow.”

I giggled at his triumphant look.  To him it was a lot of money, but I knew if I marched out to buy all we had sold, it would cost me ten times that much.  But this feeling, this free-falling, free-flying feeling, could not be bought for any price.  I felt completely liberated.  “Perfect!  That is the most perfect amount.”  I repeated it slowly, for effect.  “Four thousand, eight hundred, twenty-eight dollars, and thirty-six cents.  Well, how do you like that?  The sum total of my life amounts to $4,828 dollars.  And thirty-six cents.”  I picked up a hand full of bills and showered them over the only two honest riches of my life.  “And two, scruffy children worth their weight in gold and precious jewels.” 

We had a money storm in the middle of our living room campsite, and then pinched a ten-dollar bill out of the money mess and ordered Little Ceasars  $9.99 pizza pizza special special.

Money was not an issue with me.  I had my summer teacher’s salary, a chunk invested in my name only and, in four more days, I would no longer have the responsibility of gas, electricity, water, or phone.  I had found summer renters by placing a three-line ad in the newspaper and, one week from now, a rent-all truck would show up and fill the house with somebody else’s problems and personalities, permeating the air with their faintly colored breath-mists for the next ninety days, long enough for me to decide to go, or stay, on a more permanent basis.  I thought about buyng a tipi, but that sounded too white.  Besides, a traveler on the wide path of life needs wheels.  I debated about going cellular on the road but nixed the idea.  Did Jack Kerouac have a cell phone?  Did Mark Twain?  John Steinbeck? 

With the $4,828.36, I cleared every credit card: Sears, Penneys, Radio Shack, Visa, Mastercard.  The irony did not escape me.  The money from the sale of my earthly goods covered all the debt and left me with $0.81.  So my life value had just tallied out at $0.81. I felt no regret.

Then, I drove my now paid for ‘96 Nissan into a used car lot, picked out a small cabover, Toyota camper with 72,000 miles on it, traded the Nissan as a down payment on it, and financed the remaining $3,000.  I debated whether to go pull cash from the investment fund for the remainder, but decided to give that ninety days as well.  Ninety days from now, if the alignment of the sun and moon so dictated, I would sell or keep the camper.  After twelve years, ninety days was an eye blink, a mere twitch of time. 

Had I known, had I had any inkling how completely those ninety days would alter my life-I still would not have done any different.  In fact, I might have hastened the deconstruction of my life even further. 

By the time I drove the camper into the driveway, it was still only 10:30 in the morning. Tom and Emily met me at the door, the breakfast milk barely wiped from their mouths.  Thomas looked so old, appraising the new/old camper with a steady eye, walking around it.  I fully expected him to pull the latch, lift the hood, grunt and groan knowingly over the dirty morass of wires and parts; but no, that is what his dad would have done if he were still here.  Instead, Thomas let out a war-whoop and launched himself behind the wheel.

“Where we going, Mom?  This is cool.  Can I have the bed up here?  Can we sleep in it tonight?  Please Mom?”  He thumped his hand on the roof of the cab to indicate his preferred sleeping space.

“Yes. You can have that space.  You wouldn’t catch me squeezing this old body into that confined space.  Emily and I will take this one.”  I touched the two cushioned benches facing off across the flimsy, pedestal table.”  I chuckled at Emily’s puzzled face.  “It all folds down, into a big, comfy bed.  And look, I got an old room-sized tent for when we find a place we want to stay for awhile.”  I flipped the lid to show the kids.  The dull green beast of a tent huddled beneath one of the benches using every square inch of space.

Tom crawled out of the driver’s seat and came to sit on the bench opposite of where Emily and I were sitting.  His soft, yellow, breath-mist was suddenly as vibrant as yellow flame.  He looked like a gentle dragon on a maroon, velvet throne.  I stared at him, at every powerful line of his young, handsome face. 

God, I loved these kids.

“Mom, what ARE we doing?  Where are we going?  And why?”

Ah, small boy of the big questions.  My son had much larger questions than his father had ever had.  I already knew both of my children had inherited the same heart defect I’d suffered from most of my life.  I saw it at birthday parties, school functions and gatherings when the herd instinct kicked in and other children began to swoop down on a single victim, but both Emily and Tom backed away instantly, unwilling to participate in causing another person pain.  Even at adult functions, the first sign of gossip and bad-talking some unsuspecting soul, my kids asked politely to be excused. 

Thomas was staring at me now, waiting for the answer. 

“So, where are we going?  Oh, what a question, my son.  To the moon?  To the sea?  To the mountains and forests?  I know we will cross a desert when it is at least 129 degrees.”

“Mom!”

“Okay, okay.  I don’t know.”  I said.  “I don’t know where we’re going, all right?  I want to try life without all this baggage.  We’ll be like a snail carrying our house with us.”

“But what will we do?”  This came from Em–dear, serious, sweet, silent Emily.  She was the white lace on the deeper red of my heart; Tom the center, Emily the border. 

“Listen, guys.  I don’t know.  I only know that I’ll know when it comes.  Does that make sense?” 

They nodded solemnly.  I suppose if their minds had been more firmly pointed toward adulthood, they would have listed all the reasons this adventure made no sense.  They’d sound like my mother, talking about big city dangers with a small town voice, and of course, the foolishness of towing two young children along on such an adolescent adventure.  This I knew because my mother, bless her heart, had planted herself in one small section of my brain. 

But they were kids, and kids go along.

Emily had never breathed color.  I still didn’t know what that meant.  Could it be the color that she breathes is outside of the spectrum of knowable colors and the tiny receptors in my eyes were unable to perceive such subtle, delicate hues? 

Later, after the kids had drifted into the floating sea of dreams in the camper outside my front door, I pulled the yellow blanket around my shoulders and padded barefoot across the chill, damp, ground and climbed onto the trampoline.  I stared bravely up at the sky. 

The moon was illuminating the fast-moving clouds, on adventures of their own, I supposed.  How I wished this taut trampoline canvas was a magic carpet.  Or I wanted the giant cottonwood in the neighbor’s yard to use its wide, strong arms to lift me up and cradle me next to its heart so I could feel the beat pulsing from deep within the earth through a million yards of root system.  Since the load of stuff had lifted off, I was now fully aware that I wanted a lot.  I wanted it all.  But my all had nothing to do with this mundane world and its mundane stuff.  On this I was crystal clear. 

What stayed hidden beneath the course I’d chosen, however, was the silliness of believing that whatever was missing in my soul had anything to do with what I had accumulated outside of my soul.  The two were not related.  This I was to learn again and again on this journey.  But for now, I wanted to feel stripped to the bone, naked on the face of the earth, my heart, soul, and body drained like an engine of its oil, ready for something else to slide in and grease the emptiness.